Expats praise ‘invaluable’ social media

A new survey of more than 3,000 expats has revealed that social media is one of the most important tools available for people who are living and working abroad.

While email was cited as the most popular method of long distance communication, social sites such as Twitter and Facebook also recorded high numbers of use.

Of the respondents, 52 percent said they to use email to communicate with loved ones at least two times per week, and 39 percent had the same amount of use on Facebook. The video calling platform Skype followed with 36 percent of the respondents using it with the same regularity.

Contrastingly, more traditional communication methods showed much smaller numbers- only 14 percent used a telephone landline more than twice a week and only 16 percent used a mobile phone the same amount.

Interestingly, social sites such as Facebook seem to have greater popularity amongst expats in certain nations than the native population- 68 percent of expats in the Middle East use Facebook regularly, while only eight percent of the natives do the same.

British expat Emily Ruck-Keene spoke to The Telegraph about the joys of social media: “Social media – by which I mean my blog, Twitter, Facebook etc – has given me a unique means of contacting other Brits/expats who are over here, leading to new friends and contacts.”